For those of you who haven’t discovered already: Apple VASTLY underestimated demand for 10.1 “Instant Update” CDs. Most readers who didn’t hit the store at 9a were plain out of luck. Salvation, though, can be described in two words: “master CD.”
For those of you who haven’t discovered already: Apple VASTLY underestimated demand for 10.1 “Instant Update” CDs. Most readers who didn’t hit the store at 9a were plain out of luck. Salvation, though, can be described in two words: “master CD.”
Apparently SOME retailers are allowed to burn their OWN duplicate 10.1 update CDs when they run out of stock of the paltry handful Apple shipped to its resellers. And, to make a long story short, that’s why I’m writing this story from Mt. Kisco’s DataLink store, live on — AOL — on — get this — a PC running Windows98.
Mt. Kisco, it turns out, is about a 20 minute drive from White Plains, NY in Westchester County, outside New York City — a fact I myself didn’t know until about 20 minutes ago. Most of Apple’s authorized resellers are either choosing, or being told by Apple, not to burn their own CDs, meaning every store in the NYC area is currently out of stock. Which brings us to DataLink: the oldest computer sales shop in Westchester County, with Apple authorized sales and repair, located across from the Borders Books & Music in scenic downtown Mt. Kisco. DataLink burned me a CD in a couple of minutes and charged me just US$4 for the trouble. (That plus gas mileage, and I still saved $$ vs. Apple’s $20 deal. And I got out into the countryside on a lovely fall evening.) For those of you fellow suburban New Yorkers, give them a call at 914-666-2358 and stop by and say hello.
For everyone else, here’s the bad news: The Wiz and CompUSA in the NYC area are all sold out and don’t expect new shipments until early next week. CompUSA was taking reserve orders. Circuit City didn’t receive any CDs at all, despite being an authorized reseller.
More details soon on the rest of the country — once I dig through the pile of reader reports we got (thanks — just give me some time now!).
In the meantime, best advice is call some of the smaller Apple resellers in your area and see if they’ll burn you a CD! Good luck!
